Digital Games For 21st Century Learning: Teacher Librarians\u27 Beliefs And Practices

Digital games as tools for learning in K–12 have been a topic of intense discussion over the last 15 years. One area of focus has been on the integration of commercial off-the-shelf games in lesson plans. A predictive factor for the adoption and integration of digital games is the attitudes or readiness of teachers. Yet, while many studies have examined this with teachers themselves, teacher librarians (TLs) have largely been ignored, despite the key role they play in education and technology adoption in schools. This study attempted to determine TLs’ beliefs and practices about digital games as 21st century learning tools, to examine similarities and differences with those of classroom teachers, and to see if and how TLs’ pedagogical beliefs impacted their perceptions of barriers toward digital game adoption. The Teachers’ Attitudes Toward Games (TATG) Survey measured TLs’ perceptions of barriers to using digital games. Findings suggest that TLs tended to use digital games to address discrete library skills—a behaviorist practice—despite the fact that they tended to hold constructivist pedagogical beliefs. Though, evidence showed that some were using games to integrate 21st century skills into classroom lessons. Similar to findings on classroom teachers, TLs perceived lack of time, lack of infrastructure, and lack of support as barriers to using digital games. Furthermore, TLs with behaviorist beliefs tended to perceive greater barriers to using digital games as compared to TLs with constructivist beliefs

How to develop financial applications with game features in e-banking?

As for Gamification, it is about business software with game characteristics, understanding the software development process will improve the practices, and will more than likely, improve the business itself (make it more efficient, effective, and less costly and mainly collect a positive influence from the customers). This study aims to develop a framework that provides the mechanisms to ensure that the software will have game characteristic and that clients will recognize it as Gamification. Our results show that the five-step framework proposal applied to the Gamification project management on this study, the Spiral development model, and the group discussion results into a positive effect on customers and e-business. The spiral development methodology used for the development of this application showed to be the appropriated for this type of project. The tests with discussion-groups proved to be a key "tool" to identify and adapt the game characteristics that has led to the improvement of customer perception of socialness, usefulness ease of use, enjoyment and ease of use that probed to have a strong positive impact on the intention to use the game.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Information Management in Large-scale Disaster Exercises: An Integrated Perspective

Simulation exercises are fundamental for building knowledge, skills and capacities of participants to effectively address challenges in crisis management. A key element in emergency response and exercises are the capacities to work with information to support decision-making processes. However, not only exercise participants are dealing with challenges in information management (IM), but those controlling and directing exercises as well. Dynamic environments of exercises require IM capacities -for participants and directors- to optimize training opportunities. Despite common challenges, IM activities of exercise directors and participants have so far been considered as separate fields. This paper looks at these two perspectives as part of an integrated system and examines the similarities and differences of IM in two large-scale exercises. The parallels between them present options to further explore how alignment and -more importantly- synergy of IM practices between exercise participants and directors could improve the quality of information management training in exercise

Video games as American popular culture

Video games have moved, possibly surpassing even movies, into a central role in American popular culture in a relatively short time, and today there is increasing evidence that the video game console –to some extent, as much as the personal computer– has emerged as a central media device through which “convergence culture” is taking place. In the world of massively multiplayer online games, new (and very real) economies and cultures have evolved with striking rapidity, while on a very different scale we see casual games like Angry Birds (2009) and Candy Crush (2012) increasingly becoming integrated into the rhythms of everyday life. Perhaps more than any other aspect of popular culture, video games have blurred the distinction between work and play; the games we play (and work at) tell us about American popular culture and where it is going

Games for a new climate: experiencing the complexity of future risks

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Center Task Force Reports, a publication series that began publishing in 2009 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.This report is a product of the Pardee Center Task Force on Games for a New Climate, which met at Pardee House at Boston University in March 2012. The 12-member Task Force was convened on behalf of the Pardee Center by Visiting Research Fellow Pablo Suarez in collaboration with the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre to “explore the potential of participatory, game-based processes for accelerating learning, fostering dialogue, and promoting action through real-world decisions affecting the longer-range future, with an emphasis on humanitarian and development work, particularly involving climate risk management.” Compiled and edited by Janot Mendler de Suarez, Pablo Suarez and Carina Bachofen, the report includes contributions from all of the Task Force members and provides a detailed exploration of the current and potential ways in which games can be used to help a variety of stakeholders – including subsistence farmers, humanitarian workers, scientists, policymakers, and donors – to both understand and experience the difficulty and risks involved related to decision-making in a complex and uncertain future. The dozen Task Force experts who contributed to the report represent academic institutions, humanitarian organization, other non-governmental organizations, and game design firms with backgrounds ranging from climate modeling and anthropology to community-level disaster management and national and global policymaking as well as game design.Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centr

Sustainable interaction for mobility system

The results of top-down policymaking approach are not enough, "sustainable development can not be imposed from above. It will not take root unless people across the country are actively engaged (UK DEFRA 2002, 7) ". The goal of this research is to try to use the interaction and gamification strategy as a tool combined with a set of personal data to increase users' awareness of the impact of each action. The research context is the mobility system. The increase in road congestion and so the risk to compromise human well-being are just some of the critical points in the future. There are already some possible solutions for these problems, such as shared mobility and autonomous cars, but this is not just a business or technological change. Citizens will first and foremost influence the future with their decisions and behaviour. For the experimentation, a case study was developed, useful for obtaining and analyzing the qualitative and quantitative research results. The case study, thought to be developed within a fully self-driving car, concerns the design of an interactive augmented reality game in which the user’ role is to make decisions as a leader of his fictional world, as result of his decisions the environment around him change. The game continually reconfigures itself taking advantage of users' personal information and data collected through different ways. The gesture, copy, and other characterizing elements will follow the needs of each user. Instead of a more traditional approach that results frustrating and not very involving for the user, the game uses an ironic, surreal, and funny tone of voice in order to be more engageable. The goal is to make conscious users towards the environment that surrounds him and his ability to affect positively or negative the system in which he lives

A flexible object orientated design approach for the realisation of assistive technology

This thesis contributes to a growing body of research conducted by the Interactive Systems Research Group (ISRG) at Nottingham Trent University within the fields of accessibility and accessible technologies. Core to this research is the exploration of how interactive technologies can be developed and applied as platforms for education, rehabilitation and social inclusion. To this end the group has been actively evolving the User Sensitive and Inclusive Design (USID) methodology for the design, development and evaluation of accessible software and related technologies. This thesis contributes to the further development of the USID method with a focus on its application for the design of assistive technology

The total assessment profile, volume 1

A methodology is described for the evaluation of societal impacts associated with the implementation of a new technology. Theoretical foundations for the methodology, called the total assessment profile, are established from both the economic and social science perspectives. The procedure provides for accountability of nonquantifiable factors and measures through the use of a comparative value matrix by assessing the impacts of the technology on the value system of the society

Academic Libraries in Transition: Current Trends, Future Prospects

Academic libraries are in transition because of changes in the context of higher education. Changes in the world of information are even more radical: the displacement of paper, the primacy of the search engine, the emergence of the digital lifestyle, and innovative patterns of scholarly communication. Decreasing reliance on local collections is transforming the library as a physical destination.Traditional measures of library success have begun to be replaced. Given the superiority of other information professionals’ data management skills, the role of academic librarians will shift toward the enablement of learning.This environment of upheaval will pose both opportunities and challenges for academic librarians